I’m a Christian, Therefore I Believe in Same-Gender Marriage

Legal rights for gay couples are back in the news again. In addition to the recent vote in the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention to not consider an amendment limiting marriage to between a man and a woman, there were also similar votes in both New Jersey and (gasp) the country of Colombia to grant legal marriage rights to gay couples. And surrounding all three votes were religious people protesting, saying that the moves would violate the teachings of the Bible.

When I hear of my brothers and sisters in the faith protesting full equality for gay people in the name of the Bible, it reminds me of a fake brochure that was going around a few years ago. On the cover were the words, “Open this for everything Jesus ever said about Homosexuality.”

And, of course, if you opened it up, it was blank, absolutely blank.

It’s true. Jesus never said a single word about gays or lesbians or same-gender marriage, or any of the other social issues that so many people seem to be possessed with today.

There are, of course, other places in the Bible that talk about various forms of same-gender coupling. The Apostle Paul, for example, in one of his letters, condemned a particularly horrendous practice in ancient Rome where an older rich male would take in a young boy and have him castrated and then use him as a sex toy. Well, I wouldn’t approve of that either.

And then there are the famous passages in Leviticus 18 and 20, that are often used by people to excoriate Gays. Chapter 18 says that it is an “abomination” if a man “lies” with someone who is “of his own flesh” (with the odd exception of his sister or daughter), or neighbors, or animals or another man. Then chapter 20 says that if a male is caught doing any of those things, then all of them—men, women, and animals—should be taken to the edge of town and killed, some by fire, some with rocks. Um, in my most religious moments, I don’t think I would want to enact those provisions into law.

Now, it’s not as though Jesus didn’t have strong opinions on other things. He railed against people who were wealthy or powerful, or who oppressed the poor, the sick and the weak. But he never said a word about two women who met playing bridge and fell in love and then wanted to seal their love in holy matrimony.

He talked a lot about welcoming in those who were —as we might say today—“marginalized”: Samaritans, lepers, and even women (men were not supposed to even talk to a woman, though Jesus often did). But he never said anything about two young men who meet in college and fall in love but can never tell anyone because their church has told them that their love is a sin.

Jesus’ sense of radical openness to all kinds of people was very controversial in his day and it still is today. He said to go out into the highways and byways and bring in the kinds of people that most of us would not want to have in our family and seat at our table. In fact, that attitude of his was probably one of the things that got him killed. And following in his footsteps today isn’t easy.

But I’m not a Christian because what Jesus said was easy. I’m a Christian because what he said was true.

When I hear people like Jerry Falwell, may he rest in peace, or Pat Robertson, or Franklin Graham, or James Dobson, all say that we should keep whole groups of people from getting married, I don’t know where they’re going with that, but I think I’m going with Jesus.

When I hear so many politicians—most of whom are Christians or at least religious—say that it’s legal for Brittney Spears to have a one-day marriage because she got drunk in a bar, but that we need to re-write the constitution to protect us from the two gay guys who lived across the street from my mother and took care of her when she was old and sick, I think I’m going with Jesus.

When the chips are down and the going gets rough, and people are claiming that we need to protect ourselves from a dangerous wave of tolerance, and openness, and acceptance, I think I’m going with Jesus.

I'm a Christian, therefore I think I have to believe in same-gender marriage.

Opinions and the News

I was listening to the news the other day and I heard a startling thing. It seems that in an age in which we have an over abundance of news sources from TV, Radio, blogs, Internet, etc., a growing number of Americans know less and less about the news.

A media polling company called the “Pew Center for the People and the Press,” asked a bunch of people nation-wide some basic questions and then compared their answers to similar questions asked ten years ago. For example, they asked “Who is the Vice-President of the United States?” The answer, of course, is Dick Cheney. But in 1989 74% of the people knew the answer (Dan Quayle) and today it’s down to 69%. When asked the name of their governor in 1989, 74% knew and today only 66%. In fact, more people knew Arnold Schwarzenegger (93%) than Lewis Libby, Robert Gates, and Harry Reid combined.

That’s pretty significant. It’s one thing for well-intentioned people to disagree on the interpretation of facts, but when we don’t even know the facts, how do we function as a democracy? They cited a number of other issues (which party controls the Congress, is the Supreme Court Chief Justice a liberal or a conservative, and does the US have a trade deficit), and in all of these the percentage of people who got it right went down from 1989 to today.

A couple of years ago another polling organization called the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) did a similar survey of our grasp of facts in the news but this time added questions about where people get their news. The results were startling. People were asked about three things. First, did we ever find links between Iraq and al Qaeda (answer: no we didn’t)? Second, were weapons of mass destruction ever found in Iraq (no, they weren’t)? Third, did global public opinion support the US in the invasion of Iraq (not one country in the world broke fifty percent in support for our invasion)? Did the CIA or the State Department ever say that we were in any imminent danger from Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction (no, neither one did)?

All of these items were clear, objective facts and were reported on extensively in the news. However, the scary truth is that 60% of Americans got a majority or all of them wrong.

Again, it is one thing to say, “well, even though we don’t have any evidence of danger from Iraq, or there is no evidence of a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda, I still believe we should go to war for a variety of other reasons.” That is an informed decision based on information. But most Americans are making decisions based on wrong information. How does that happen in a democracy? How can we function as a democracy when most of our people do not know the basic facts behind the big issues of the day that our nation is debating and voting on?

Here are some other things that the majority of Americans got wrong: a big majority (93%) believe that labor and environmental standards should be written into our international trade agreements with other countries. And by a big majority they believe that President Bush agrees with them on that (by 84%). In fact he opposes adding both labor and environmental standards to trade deals.

Americans also support the US being part of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (68%), the International Criminal Court (75%), the treaty banning land mines (66%), and the Kyoto treaty on climate change (54%), and they all believe by significant majorities that the president agrees with them in these things. But in fact he opposes all of them.

Whether we support this or that issue is not my point. My point is that it is frightening that we are so consistently wrong in what we think the basic facts are.

Another part of the Pew surveys looked at where we get our news, and this was also interesting. It seems that if you get your news from Fox news, then you tend to get the basic facts of an issue (say, about whether Osama and Saddam were in cahoots together) wrong a whopping 80% of the time! And if you get your news from public radio or public television (NPR or PBS), then you get the facts wrong about 23% of the time. In other words, if you get your news from Fox, then you are highly likely to still believe that Saddam was somehow behind the attacks of 911 or that Osama Bin Ladin had training camps in Iraq. But if you get your information from NPR and PBS, then you probably know better.

But my original fear is this: These basic facts in the news are not subject to debate. Not one weapons inspector, either from the US or the UN, ever said that they found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There was never any credible evidence of links between Saddam and Osama; even the President has now said so. So, how can we be an informed electorate if we consistently believe things that are clearly untrue about big issues? How can our democracy function if we consistently argue and debate using bad information? What kind of role modeling are we setting for our children and grand children?